


Noise Policy

by Masu_Trout



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Identity Issues, Libraries and/or Killer Robot Armies, Lies, M/M, Mission Fic, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-07
Updated: 2017-11-07
Packaged: 2019-01-25 23:35:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12543812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masu_Trout/pseuds/Masu_Trout
Summary: Deacon would like to blame the stealth boys or the surgery or the cocktails of chems he's taken over the years to push down the post-surgical pain, but he's pretty sure the fault lies in only one place.A mission is, objectively, the very worst place to have an identity crisis. Too bad that's not stopping Deacon right now.





	Noise Policy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tuesday](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuesday/gifts).



> Happy Halloween! I hope you enjoy.

They're crouched in what must have been a library once, him and Nate, rifling through a stack of half-rotten books in search of a key one of the Railroad's operatives was supposed to have hidden here. Privately Deacon's beginning to think they might have to get a new operative—this whole thing stinks of a trap—but he's not going to say anything. Someone's got to keep faith in the Railroad, and if this ends with them getting buried up to their ears in Institute synths, well… Nate is very good at killing. 

It's a little bit hot, a little bit horrifying. The scale hasn't tipped one way or the other just yet.

“Find anything?” he murmurs, low-voiced as he can manage. His hands are coated in what he can only describe as _mold mush_ , the offspring of water and paper joined in matrimonial bliss for two hundred years. It's not the worst thing he's ever touched, but it's officially Not Great.

“No key, if that's what you mean.” Nate holds up the crumbling spine of a long-dissolved hardcover, waves it jauntily at Deacon. “I did find a book written by someone named _Eando_ , though, so if you're ever in the mood for a new alias…”

“Wouldn't be my weirdest,” Deacon says. “I once went by Mayo for a good three months or so.”

“You did _not_.”

“Did too! Pulled it off a wrapper that happened to be blowing by, then couldn't ditch it 'til the job was over.”

He's telling the truth, or at least he's pretty sure he's telling the truth. He definitely went by Mayo for a while—or at least he told Desdemona he was going by Mayo—and the bit with the wrapper probably happened too, though it might have been the time he'd had to be named Lemon for a week and a half. 

Fuck. Did it? He can't quite remember if he used a name off a piece of pre-war trash or if he just told someone he'd once done it as a distraction. Either one sounds like him.

“Shit,” Deacons hisses to himself. He'd like to blame the stealth boys or the surgery or the cocktails of chems he's taken over the years to push down the post-surgical pain, but he's pretty sure the fault lies in only one place. 

He's known a lot of spies that couldn't keep their stories straight; always got them killed eventually. Deacon's always prided himself on never forgetting, except—irony of gloriously idiotic ironies—he's pretty sure he can't keep _himself_ straight anymore.

This must be how wiped synths feel _all the time_ ; just a swirl of memories that all seem perfectly real and yet contradict each other in a million subtle ways. If he weren't already a Railroad supporter, he'd probably be turning into one right about now.

“Don't worry.” Nate looks over at him, calm as ever. “If it's here, we'll find it.” Either he's completely unaware they're probably about to get fucked over or he just doesn't care. Probably the second, knowing him. 

Deacon once joked about Nate putting 'kill a deathclaw' on his bucket list only to find that—surprise!—he wouldn't need to because he'd already managed that _weeks ago_. While fighting off a small army of raiders.

“And if it's not here?” Deacon asks, then immediately winces. The veteran's not supposed to unload his worries on the rookie. Bad for morale.

Nate only shrugs, though. He might even look a little bit pleased at the idea. “Then we say fuck the key and break the door down. I've got dynamite enough to give it a go.”

“…Which is great, except for the part where Tinker Tom warned the building's whole foundation is unstable.”

“It survived nuclear bombs,” Nate points out. “How rickety can it be?”

Very rickety, if Tinker's warnings were anything to go by, but still, point to Nate. Sometimes the only thing more comfortable than a beautifully-crafted lie is a little bit of honesty delivered in the bluntest way possible. 

Nate thinks they aren't fucked just yet. That's got to mean something.

They work together in silence for some time, making their way down to the end of the science fiction and on to the westerns. He's always liked the style out west, from what he's seen of the old posters, though the thought of actually riding a horse makes him a touch nervous—all the drawings he's seen make them look like horribly-off not-quite-brahmin with elongated faces and weird matchstick legs.

Still. Maybe he'll make himself a proper cowboy outfit one day, with the leather and the hat and all. Might help him out of a pinch. Might make Nate laugh.

In the stifling quiet, every creaking floorboard sounds like a gen one booting up and every rustle of paper sounds like a muffled footstep. He's stuck in a hell of his own making, fear for his life warring with fear for his sanity; each is somehow strengthening the other. Deacon's fingers keep creeping closer and closer to his gun, no matter how often he reminds himself that Nate isn't worried. 

(Nate didn't start worrying back on that one mission when they had mirelurks chewing through the floorboards under their feet, or when they found that super mutant with a nuke strapped to its chest while out scavenging. Nate's lack of worry is not equivalent to anyone else's lack of worry.)

Finally, when he can't take it anymore, he looks up from his waterlogged scraps and asks, “Do you ever worry that you're too good at your job?”

It's a stupid question, obviously, Deacon's not even sure how you could be _too good_ at shooting—

And Nate says, “Yes,” calm as you please, no explanation given or thought necessary.

“Ah,” responds Deacon, ever the soul of eloquence and wit.

He thinks that's going to be the end of it; Nate turns into a brick wall when he doesn't want to talk, and Deacon can be incredibly obnoxious but he's not stupid enough to antagonize the guy he's relying on to get him back to base in one piece. (Well, not to antagonize him _too_ much, anyway.) 

He's still trying to force down the curiosity, though, when Nate puts down his own pulp and says, to a lopsided bookshelf in the opposite corner from where Deacon is sitting, “Before.”

“Hmm?” asks Deacon, dropping his eyes to his hands. Nate's broadcasting the most blatant _don't-look-at-me_ signals he's ever seen, and—yeah, okay, Deacon can respect that. He gets it.

“Back before—you know. The bombs.”

“Ah, right, the good ol' days over in The Land of Milk and Honey.”

Nate snorts. “Nothing good about those days.”

“Nate. Nate. _Hot showers. On demand._ I've had, like, five in my life, and that is more than enough for me to declare them an official Good Thing.”

It's an obvious joke, and Deacon's expecting a laugh, but instead Nate only sighs. “We didn't really get hot water, that far up north. I was on one of the point teams—we hardly ever came out of the snow. Had to keep watch. Protect _American soil_.”

The snarl his voice dips into by the end of his sentence is dripping with poison, but Deacon's caught up on a different bit. “Wait. You were a soldier?”

That, of all things, gets him a stifled laugh out of Nate. Muffled by a jacket sleeve, if the sound is any sign. “Sniper. What, did you think I was an accountant? A stock broker? I just learned to shoot from doing so well at _equations_?”

“Obviously not,” Deacon snaps, a touch annoyed. It's not like he had any stupid ideas about it lined up in his head, he just—hadn't thought about it at all, really. Pre-war families all lived in perfect little houses with roofs and refrigerators and hot showers, and they sent their perfect little children to school and shopped at stores where everything was just laying out on the shelves and never worried about getting shanked in their sleep.

By the time the end of the world rolled around, thirty-seven percent of the adult population of the United States was employed by the government in service of the war effort. Deacon had heard that before, from old books and scholars and well-mannered ghouls alike. He just… he'd never thought about what that meant.

“I just—I dunno, you could have been one of those hoarders, right? With the stashes of cans and bullets and all that.” He likes those guys—not like they ended up surviving, given that most of them seemed to think a root cellar was strong enough to keep away the radiation, but there's nothing like breaking into a pre-war house and finding ammo and food waiting for you.

Nate snorts. “If I was one of those, Sanctuary'd have better supplies. No, I was—up in Canada for a long time, off and on. Got sent up right out of school. Needed something to do, thought I could be a hero.”

“Yeah,” Deacon says. There are a lot of those kids, even these days. Suited up for the Brotherhood, running wild in raider gangs, even tagging along with the Railroad. Desdemona once said they were important, that you needed people who really _believed_ in the cause. 

Deacon hadn't told her that believing in the cause meant it was going to be a miserable slog most days, and you'd do things you'd hate yourself for and try to convince yourself it was worth it, and eventually you'd realize it was probably was never going to make much of a difference but you kept on going with it anyway because people needed you. It hadn't fit his persona. 

He's supposed to be the guy who smiles and laughs and acts a bit like an ass— _honestly, that idiot, doesn't he know this is serious work?_ —but always comes through in the end. He's not supposed to be fucked up about it all, because if even he's struggling then what chance to the rest of them have?

For a moment, Nate just breathes. He sounds like a man who's got something eating him up inside, and when Deacon risks a glance over he looks just as torn. Just when it seems he's about to spill it all, he sighs and laughs and shakes his head. “Never mind,” he says, “I… it's not much of a story. Not a good one, anyway. But”—he cuts off there, and then alarmingly, without any warning, his hand is on Deacon's shoulder—“you're not alone. It's worse when it's something you're good at, because you never get to take a break. Right? Can't trust it to someone who might screw it all up.”

Deacon's too confused by the sensation to say anything at first, caught between, _Fuck, someone's touching me_ and _Fuck_ , Nate's touching me, and once his brain finally gets with the program his instinctual first response is to go on the defensive. “Hey, now, I didn't say we were talking about me. It was just… a hypothetical, that's all. I'm the exact right amount of good at my job.”

Nate doesn't say a word. All he does is look at Deacon. Somehow, it's worse than any argument could be. Deacon's not sure how he never thought of Nate as a sniper before—that hawk-like gaze could only belong to a man used to looking down a scope.

“Egh,” Deacon grumbles, more a noise of protest than anything approaching human communication. “Sure you weren't a therapist, way back when? I don't even know exactly what it is they _did_ and I'm still having to resist the urge to ask you how it makes you feel.” 

“That's not even right,” Nate complains, “They're supposed to ask you how _you_ feel, not the other way around.”

“See? Clearly a therapist at heart.” Softer, he adds, “…Thanks.”

“No problem.” Nate shrugs, awkward as hell and somehow endearing about it, and gives Deacon's shoulder one last quick squeeze before he pulls his hand back.

(And, because fuck his life, Deacon now gets to spend the next hour wondering whether that was a come-on or just a soldierly attempt at comfort. The only person he knows who might have a clue is Danse, Nate's newest little tagalong and, frankly—fuck asking that guy.)

After a moment, they both go back to sorting papers. Nate opened up to him, and there's a squirmy little part of Deacon (a part, annoyingly, that he hasn't managed to stomp out yet) that really wants him to do the same. Secret for secret, pain for pain. A fair trade.

There's a lot of things he could open up with, from _I lied to you last week about liking Insta-Mash and I'm still not sure why_ to _I don't remember my sister's name, and there's been a couple of really bad days where I wasn't quite sure I ever had one_ , but—nah. 

Nate's not the sort of guy who thinks that way. He offers up help (care, honestly, friendship) without expecting anything in turn, and it's definitely going to get him killed someday but it's also the reason Deacon likes tagging along with him so much. 

It's a comfortable silence between them now, just their breathing and the creaking floorboards and the soggy squelch of horrible nasty paper pulp. There's no pressure to spill his guts. No one snapping at him to just explain it all already. 

Funny enough, he's more open with Nate than he is most anyone else these days. 

Deacon lets the silence build for a few minutes until the urge to fill it up with asinine bullshit once more becomes overwhelming. The floors above creak again—pre-war construction clearly didn't have long-term soundproofing as a priority—and Deacon grumbles, “No wonder people never went to the library. If the floors sounded like a flock of killer bots, I'd probably hate reading too.”

“The floors?” Nate asks, sounding honestly curious.

“The floors. You know, the weird squeaky noises they've been making? Don't tell me you didn't hear it, Mister I'll-Take-First-Watch.”

“That's… that's not the floors. I thought you knew.”

“What,” Deacon says. It's not a question. He'd very much like it to be one, but he's pretty sure he already knows the answer.

“The gen ones up above? I didn't realize you didn't recognize the noise.”

There's an awful, _awful_ moment of stillness as the horror of realization dawns fully in Deacon. “You mean”—his voice is too loud, suddenly, and he pitches it down to a whisper before he continues—“you mean this whole time there's been an army of hostile synths waiting for us to walk right into them?”

“Not an army, really. I think maybe twenty or so, judging by the noise.” Nate shrugs. “I think they were probably meant to trigger when we walked through the front staircase. Lucky break.”

Right, Deacon remembers, they'd climbed that rubble-edged gap where the ceiling had half-collapsed long ago because Nate wanted to save time. He'd complained about it, too—the smell there was awful.

 _Lucky break_. Goddamn it. Way too close for comfort, more like.

“Okay,” Deacon declares, “that's _it_. This was a stupid, stupid trap, and I can't believe we're alive right now, and we're going to celebrate that surprising fact by leaving right now and going back to base and washing our disgusting hands in lukewarm water while pretending we're in some kind of luxury vault shower. Captain's orders.”

“…Did someone forget to tell me the Railroad has captains, now, or is that part of the pretending too?”

“Of course we have captains.” Deacon flips his fabric-and-leather-scraps coat back over his shoulders. He's going to have to throw this disguise away once they get back; the whole thing reeks of slime and rot. “It's a long, long tradition, dating back to the historical Railroad's allyship with sympathetic pirates. Really interesting story, actually. Remind me to tell you about the origins of the word starboard sometime soon.”

Nate takes a little longer to be ready to leave. He stacked a whole heap of guns and knives and various small devices Deacon doesn't know the purpose of on nearby shelves before he first knelt down—to keep them close at hand or just clear of the muck, who even knows with this guy—and watching him put everything back is every bit as fascinating as it is infuriatingly slow.

“Pre-war, Deacon,” he says, sliding a shank back into his sleeve. “I did actually go to school.”

“Ah fuck, I gotta start tailoring my material better. Drummer Boy would've fallen for that.” He waits a moment for Nate finish strapping the last of the knives and small guns back into various small pockets and hidden flaps of fabric, then snaps his fingers towards the door. “Now come on, back the way we came. Let's get gone while we still can.”

“We could do that…” Nate says. His voice is brimming with promise. Horrible, horrible promise.

“Or?” Deacon asks, already dreading the answer.

From somewhere within his jacket, Nate fishes out a pair of mines.

“I'm not saying we try to kill them!” Nate starts, quick enough that Deacon can't just shoot him down. “I'm just saying we take a moment, make sure that whoever dropped those gen ones off here has a really bad day if they try to check on them.”

It's a stupid idea, for one, and also probably suicidal. It's also very, very tempting. Deacon holds off as long as he can, pretending to be responsible and careful and analytical, before he sighs and says, “Fine, let's do it.”

Nate smiles at him, wide and cheery and—God, they really are too good at this, aren't they? No same person should ever be considering this kind of stunt. 

Well, if he has to be going crazy, at least he's doing it in good company. Deacon signals Nate, and together they make their way out of the library.

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact (?): Lemon and Mayo were actually the 964th and 990th most-popular US boys' names in 1910 and 1915, respectively.


End file.
